The Pain Nurse

by Jon Talton

  Will moved his wheelchair closer. “You know why I was in that old atrium today, on my ass, on the floor, when the homeless guy attacked me?”

  Dodds opened his hands as if a bird would appear and fly away.

  “Bud Chambers dumped me there on the floor. It’s probably a miracle he didn’t do worse.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Will told him about the confrontation. “Thanks for spreading the word about me,” he added.

  “It wasn’t me, but believe what you want,” Dodds said. “Look, I get where you’re coming from with Chambers. I didn’t just like him for Theresa, I loved him. But we couldn’t make the case. Remember how much time we spent on him and that skank girlfriend, what the hell was her name?”

  “Darlene.”

  “We couldn’t build a case. Hunches aren’t evidence. And command didn’t want another scandal. So they eased him out. Okay, they eased him out after you pushed for it. But we never could find a connection between Chambers and the other killings. Then we got Factor. A jury agreed. How the hell do you explain the DNA?”

  “That was only on Theresa.”

  “So?”

  “So, Factor was technically only convicted on that crime. It was just assumed he did the other two. Anyway, you’re the one who always says young detectives depend too much on DNA, that they’ve lost the ability to do old-fashioned police work. We screwed up. He’s killing again. This one,” he indicated the doctor’s office, “has all the marks of the Slasher, right down to the hidden knife. Nobody knew about the hidden knife except us and the killer. He just loves to mind-fuck us.”

  “Okay, assuming Bud was good for the three women. And don’t go nuts, because that’s a big leap. I’m not there with you. But assuming… Why would he kill Christine Lustig?”

  “I don’t know. Let me see the murder book.”

  “You’re unbelievable.” Dodds gave a petulant laugh. “Take my word for it. There was no link. The doctor didn’t know this guy. Why would he come for her? Even if he’s a serial killer, why her?”

  “Have you questioned Chambers? Until you do, you won’t know.” Will suddenly felt a crushing exhaustion, as if a wave had hit him. He pushed on. Even the words hurt to say. “Maybe she was his type, the one that makes his fucked-up mind want to kill again. He just sees her once and this nut-job gene goes off in his brain. She looked like Theresa. See if he’s been around the hospital. He knew his way well enough to find me.”

  Dodds stared into his lap. “Maybe. But we never heard about hang-up calls with the three.”

  “They were dead by the time we could ask, and they were all single women living alone.”

  “We ran the LUDs on every one. We only saw Chambers’ number on Theresa’s phone, which is explainable. And we found…”

  “I know,” Will interrupted, “what we found. Killers can buy disposable cell phones, use pay phones. Hell, we see that every day with drug dealers. He was a cop, for God’s sake.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Let me see the murder book.”

  “I’ll think about it. In the meantime, you’d better watch your ass. You have a gift for making enemies, and let’s just say you’re not in fighting trim.”

  Will wasn’t listening. He was so tired. He managed, “He’s going to kill again. Soon.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The guard walked Cheryl Beth to her car that night, as he had since the killing. His name was Don and he was a tall, lanky black man whose stride she had difficulty matching. Still, she had grown to enjoy his company. He talked about his children and his car, comforting subjects. He had never asked her about finding Christine—he seemed like the only person at the hospital who didn’t want to know all the details. Tonight, he was out of character.

  “You must feel relieved they got him,” Don said. “Ol’ Lennie. You just never know…”

  “You never do.” She added, “Scared the crap out of me,” and Don laughed. It was a nice sound. She knew she should be relieved. Her body didn’t feel it. Her legs were tense and exhausted from the confrontation. She kept those words lucky to be alive at a distance, still marveling at how the patient had wrestled Lennie into submission. She had learned that Will Borders was a police detective, and he was in the hospital for a spinal cord tumor. He had saved her when she, a caregiver, should have been saving him. That was her mother’s voice, which could adapt to so many useless occasions. She shoved it aside.

  She was alive and didn’t begrudge the long day that resulted from the time giving the police a statement. Still, she had to complete her new consults, check on a dozen other patients, write out new order sheets, and end the day in her office, doing paperwork. Not even Lisa was left to regale her with hospital gossip or hear about her adventure. She hadn’t gotten out until nine. Now her hand and back ached from where Lennie had knocked the cell away and roughly pushed her down. The knife had appeared so suddenly. Had it been so sudden for Christine? How could it have been that way, if she was already naked? It must have gone on much longer. He must have planned it. She thought about all the times she had seen Lennie and had dismissed him as another hospital eccentric, one more poor soul that fell through the cracks. She had been alone with him in an elevator once. She shivered inside her coat as they walked in silence. She would be okay now, she told herself, looking forward to getting home and having a drink.

  They walked through several sets of automatic doors to reach the parking garage, going from the old building, through a newer wing, up and down the ramps made to allow beds and wheelchairs to transit buildings that didn’t exactly match, and finally down a long, brightly lit tube of glass that crossed the street and emptied into the parking area. It was a ten-minute fast walk and tonight she walked slower, aching. Don would just have to wait. She hated to inconvenience him but she was still grateful for his presence. If Christine’s killer really were in jail, soon she would have to give up her escorts from Don. Growing up in Corbin, she would have been terrified to be alone with a black man in a parking garage. She was sure her relatives still felt that way. Thank God I got out of there, she silently mouthed.

  “Everybody must be clearing out for the holidays,” Don was saying, surveying the nearly empty floor of the garage. The concrete surface, walls, and pillars all glowed gray-orange under the halogen lights. The relative shelter against the cold provided by the crossover was gone and the garage was freezing. Their breath made foggy clouds ahead of them. Several blue emergency stations were visible, where people could call for help in emergencies. “Always makes me sad, Christmas,” Don said. “Especially for the people who are stuck here.”

  The man stood framed in a stairwell, at the opposite corner of the garage. He was maybe fifty yards away. A white man, he wore black jeans, a Reds cap, a brown leather jacket. He just stood there. He hadn’t bounded up the stairs and was walking to his car. There were only about five cars left on the floor. He just stood there, watching them. Cheryl Beth felt her heart start racing.

  “Don…”

  “I see him.”

  Her red Saturn was comfortingly close.

  “Probably nothing, but I’m gonna talk to him,” Don said. “Once you’re safe and sound.”

  “I can take it from here,” she said, patting his arm.

  “You sure?”

  She nodded. “I’ll feel better to have you between me and him anyway. He’s probably just looking for his car, but…”

  “Don’t you worry, Cheryl Beth.” Don peeled off and walked toward the man. Cheryl Beth made her aching legs cross the last twenty feet to the Saturn. By habit, she already had her key out. She stepped between her car and the black Accord parked next to her.

  Something in the Accord made her look. It was white, on the front passenger seat. An envelope. Then it all happened at once: the name Dr. Christine Lustig written in a neat script in blue ink. Cheryl Beth hadn’t been snooping, she would later tell herself. She just saw the name—she had always had twenty-twent
y vision—and at first couldn’t believe it. That made her look closer, until she was leaning against the Honda. The envelope was addressed to Christine. It was on a pile of files and a portfolio sitting in the gray passenger seat. She glanced toward Don and saw that both he and the man in the Reds cap had disappeared. She lingered at the window, knowing she was being nosy, feeling a terrible dread from such an ordinary piece of paper. The envelope addressed to Christine had been opened; the top of it was torn and ragged as if it had been unsealed with fingers, not a letter opener. It was just sitting there. She strained to see the return address, but couldn’t. She pulled out her penlight and shone it inside.

  The rest of the car looked neat. The outside had been recently washed and glowed under the lights. The backseat was empty, the front seats clean…no spent Starbucks cups in the cup holders like in her car. Just a pile of files and a portfolio, maybe three inches thick, and on top of it a No. 10 envelope addressed in blue ink to Dr. Christine Lustig. A folded letter was visible at the edge of the serration. It wasn’t addressed to her office at the hospital. Cheryl Beth could make out her home address in Hyde Park. The return address, damn, just too small…

  “May I help you?”

  She gasped in a second of hysteria, then recovered. She slipped the penlight in her pocket. A man had appeared on the driver’s side of the car. He was wearing green scrubs and had a striking face: pale skin, prominent dark eyebrows, small eyes, intense stare. His dark hair was close-cropped and was creeping well back from his prominent, pasty forehead. She guessed he was in his early thirties. And he was wearing only green scrubs in this cold. His upper arms had sharply defined muscles.

  “I…dropped my keys. Oh, here they are.” She bent down and scraped her keychain on the concrete. When she stood again, he was still on the driver’s side, staring at her. She was too overcome at being discovered to feel scared. Anyway, he had a hospital identification clipped to his shirt pocket. It read: Judd Mason, RN. She didn’t know him.

  “It’s freezing out here.” She forced a smile. “Aren’t you cold?”

  “No.”

  “Well, have a nice evening.” She turned, unlocked her car, slid down into the seat, and relocked it. Her hands were shaking as she pushed the key into the ignition. Her breath was already fogging up the windows. She didn’t dare look at the Accord again. She turned the key. The engine started.

  As she drove away, she looked in the rearview mirror. He was still standing beside his car, watching her go.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Will watched Cheryl Beth walk through the automatic doors toward the parking garage. He was relieved that she had a guard, even though he thought most security guards would be worthless in a confrontation. Dodds’ talk about her as a person of interest, a potential suspect—he wouldn’t have bought it even if Christine Lustig’s murder didn’t have all the signs of the Slasher. He guessed that Cheryl Beth was about Cindy’s height, five-five, and she had a small-to-medium build: not someone with the strength or reach to kill with a knife with repeated, almost teasing slashes, followed by deeper wounds and a coup de grâce to the throat. The only case he could remember of a woman slashing a person’s throat had been years ago in Price Hill. A drunken husband sleeping it off, he’d beaten his wife once too often. She had taken a kitchen knife and had driven it into the side of his neck. When Will and Dodds had arrived, she was still hysterical about the copious blood from the wound—and she had looked like a tough biker chick. No, Lustig had not been killed by a woman.

  Why wasn’t Dodds going after her husband? Will had learned he was a doctor, a surgeon, named Gary Nagle. Neither he nor Dodds had ever been shy about investigating powerful people. A husband playing around had a powerful motive, even if he could hire expensive lawyers or call friends at City Hall. Will knew Dodds didn’t have any real theory of the crime other than the Slasher. Dodds just didn’t want to admit it. If Will had been running the investigation, he would have done anything to get Chambers back in an interrogation room, find probable cause to execute a search warrant. But when Dodds had asked if Will wanted to press charges for the assault, Will had said no. A chickenshit beef where Chambers could make bail, if he were even charged, would just make him more cautious. Or it might make him more dangerous.

  All this was on his mind as he watched Cheryl Beth and the guard pass through the last set of automatic doors into the garage. Will had wheeled himself up the ramp into the glassed-in bridge that connected the hospital to the parking garage. He was alone in the long, glassy, carpeted expanse. It looked like a part to a space station in an old science fiction movie. He spent a long time just watching the empty winter street below, watching the traffic in the distance, where healthy people were living their lives on the outside. He held his hand against the glass and let the cold move from his fingers up his wrist and arm. The feeling was good.

  The sound behind him caught him daydreaming. His fright seemed to expand every blood vessel. Chambers. Damn. But, no, it was just a doctor or hospital worker striding past toward the parking area. He wore only green hospital garb, no coat. An iron man. At first Will wondered if the man might challenge him, sitting alone out there. It was past visiting hours, past time for him to return to the neuro-rehab ward. He wondered if they would even miss him if he just took an elevator down to the lobby and wheeled himself out into the big world.

  With his chilled hands back on the rims of the wheelchair, he reluctantly turned himself around and rolled back inside the hospital. The usually bustling offices on these floors were closed and the hallways empty. Oncology. Diabetes Center. Endocrinology. Blood Services. The signs neatly denoted doorways or directed people down hallways. The signs pointed to dread and pain and suffering, but maybe that was just the mood he was in tonight.

  He turned the corner as he heard the voices, a man and a woman arguing. They were standing maybe fifteen feet ahead of him, facing each other but with their sides to Will. They were holding each other’s hands, but the body language was tense, as if the connection could quickly be broken. Will immediately retreated back behind the wall. Her voice was young and emotional, his older, rich-timbred, slightly condescending, words with extra enunciation. He was trying to get her to do something, or calm her down, and she was having none of it. Will knew the woman. It was one of the physical therapists that worked with the neuro-rehab patients in the gym each morning. Her name was Amy and she was cute and kind. The other man was tall and lanky, with a neat beard and wearing a white lab coat over well-pressed slacks, white shirt, tie—a doctor. He couldn’t make out the words, just the mood, stormy, until he very clearly heard the words from the man: “Cheryl Beth” and, a few beats later, “police.”

  “Police?” Amy nearly shrieked before bringing her voice down and then Will was back to hearing angry gibberish. He didn’t dare show himself. He strained to hear more.

  Then there was silence, too long a pause, followed by footsteps coming toward him. Will hunched forward and fired his arms to get the wheelchair moving. He slid into a deserted waiting area. Muzak piped annoyingly from the overhead speakers, made louder by the emptiness of the room. It was just rows of chairs, tables with sticky magazines, a couple of sickly plants, and windows looking into blackness. Will put his head down and his hands together.

  “Hey, Will, are you all right?”

  Will raised his head. Amy was bent down on her haunches to be on his level, a position you’d use to speak to a child. He pushed the thought aside and said, “Long day.”

  “I bet.” She forced a smile and gave a long sniffle. “Allergies,” she said. Her eyes were red and swollen. Will fished in his little pack and produced a small packet of tissues. She pulled one out and wiped her nose and eyes.

  “Thank you. I heard about your fight with Crazy Lennie at the old entrance today. Wow, all those lat pulls you’ve been doing must have paid off!”

  She was so young and pretty it almost made him ache, but it also made him sad for her. She spoke with the voice of
the young and pretty and innocent. “You know, I was taking a shortcut from neuro-rehab to the cafeteria the other day, and I turned the corner and there was Lennie. I will still shaken up by what happened to Dr. Lustig, but I didn’t put two and two together. It was just Lennie.”

  Just part of the furniture here, Will thought, like me.

  “He did seem more agitated than I had ever seen him. Said something about seeing the devil, and then he ran to the stairwell. Anyway, I’m really glad you’re okay. You shouldn’t seem down.”

  Will watched her face. It was like a dam ready to burst. He lowered his head and shook it.

  “My wife told me she’s leaving me.”

  “Oh, my god! Oh, Will, I’m so sorry.” She took his hands. He kept his head down.

  “I’m not surprised. I can’t really say I blame her.”

  “Don’t say that!” Amy started sobbing. “That’s not true. I’m sure you’re a wonderful man. You’ve got…you’re going to come back. How could anybody do that to another human being…”

  “She deserves someone who’s not crippled.”

  “Don’t say that! She’s a fool…”

  He held her hands and let her cry. Back in the old days, this is when Dodds would have given him the look known only to the two of them; it said, you manipulative bastard.

  “She’s a fool,” she repeated. “You seem like a nice man.”

  “Why don’t you pull over a chair.” She did.

  She sat next to him and he put an arm around her slender shoulders as she sobbed. “This is so unprofessional,” she softly wailed but didn’t stop crying. Nobody else was around.

  “The first bad call I ever went on when I got out of the academy was a multiple shooting. It was really bad, but we didn’t know what it was. Just an unknown trouble call. I’d been on the job for maybe two months. I knocked on the door and a woman throws the door open. She’s got a little girl in her arms and her expression is…I’d never seen anything like it. She knew she was dying but she’s staring intensely at me. And then she falls forward into my arms and it’s me and her and the little girl in between us. I eased them both down and when I take the girl, I see the woman’s been shot. It’s like she has on a red blouse it’s so bad. The little girl is alive, not a scratch, but she’s completely silent. You’d better believe I cried after all that.” It was true. His training officer had berated him for months as “Weepy Borders.”